6/30/05 2,000-year-old pit houses there before Hohokam
2,000-year-old pit houses there before Hohokam
By Joyesha Chesnick
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The shallow trenches and holes in the dirt, roped off in the back yard of an old adobe row house Downtown, seem at first like nothing more than the work of a diligent child playing in the mud.
Then archaeologist Homer Thiel mentions that this is the remains of a pit house built 2,000 years ago, well before the time of the Hohokam, and forms begin to jell - an arced pattern where posts once held up a roof, linear depressions where walls stood.
"This was not known before. This tells us this same spot was lived in for 2,000 years," said Thiel, project director for Desert Archaeology Inc., the firm hired to shore up the interior of a mid-19th-century triplex at 196 N. Court Ave.
The triplex, the abode of noted seamstress Soledad Jacomé and her six daughters from 1866 to 1911, will eventually be a museum in the Presidio Historic Park, a Rio Nuevo project reconstructing a tower of the Presidio fort at its original site.
It's proved to be a treasure-trove in itself.
Inside the three front rooms, Thiel has found layers of history: a pit house and pottery made by the Hohokam as early as the 750s; the largest-ever excavation of trash and debris from the Presidio era, 1775-1850, revealing residents may have been eating horses, cats and dogs; the head of a porcelain doll, a packet of Dukes Cameo Cigarettes and other evidence of more modern habitation.
Interrupting a stroll down Court Avenue to take a peek inside, Lawrence Steen aptly summed up the feeling of the place.
"If you close your eyes, you can feel things are going on in there," he said.
The pit house in the back yard is a significant discovery.
"It's from the early agricultural period, so that was a surprise," said Marty McCune, historic-preservation officer for the city of Tucson.
Older pit houses have been found west of Congress by "A" Mountain, but this is one of the oldest found east of the Santa Cruz River, McCune said.
"That is a new find; we didn't realize habitation went back that far," she said.
Other pit houses from the same era and from the age of the Hohokam, about A.D. 750 to 900, have also been found in the parking lot behind the triplex, near the Main Library and under the lawn of City Hall.
"Everywhere we looked, we found evidence," Thiel said.
The pit house in the back yard of the triplex will be studied, covered with protective cloth and filled back in with dirt. But one in the parking lot dating to around 900, which was found under a corner of the Presidio wall, may be kept uncovered and turned into an interpretive exhibit where people can see the actual remains, Thiel said.
"The plan is to figure out some way to conserve it so it doesn't erode."
That exhibit, in turn, would be part of a larger plaza connecting the planned reconstruction of the Presidio tower at the corner of Church and Washington streets and the triplex at Court Avenue.
The Tucson Presidio Trust for Historic Preservation, which has as its mission the restoration of the Presidio San Augustín del Tucson, will conduct living-history activities at the complex, said Don Laidlaw, the group's past president and current treasurer.
"We see the triplex as an important authentic historic element that adds dignity and a Southwestern flavor to the complex there," he said. "It provides an important entry to the cultural park."
Laidlaw said the trust envisions the triplex museum as a "gatekeeper," with displays of costumes and implements of the Spanish colonial era and other exhibits that can be quickly assimilated and understood by casual visitors.
"This is not a whole museum experience, but an introduction with the main displays in the Arizona State Museum and Historical Society facilities," he said.
Outside, the plaza will house ramadas that extend from the reconstructed Presidio wall and along a wall on the south boundary, which will be painted with a mural depicting life in the Presidio. There will also be some adobe brick ovens for use in cooking demonstrations.
"We're keenly interested in the portrayal of all the elements of Spanish colonial history," Laidlaw said.
The Presidio Historic Park is one of three geographic sites identified as part of the Tucson Origins Heritage Park, a project that aims to reconstruct and interpret 11,500 years of human history and 30 million years of natural history as it occurred on both sides of the Santa Cruz River.
The other two sites are the San Augustín Mission near "A" Mountain, the center of civilian rule during the Spanish colonial era, and the Mission Garden near the mission San Xavier del Bac, the religious center. The Presidio was the military center.
"Tucson will be the only city in the United States that has those distinctive elements of Spanish colonial policy clearly exhibited," Laidlaw said.
A design team for the Presidio Historic Park should be selected by mid-August, McCune said. The design should take six to eight months to complete and construction about a year. So if all goes as planned, the park should be open in two years.
● Contact reporter Joyesha Chesnick at 807-7789 or jchesnick@azstarnet.com.
By Joyesha Chesnick
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The shallow trenches and holes in the dirt, roped off in the back yard of an old adobe row house Downtown, seem at first like nothing more than the work of a diligent child playing in the mud.
Then archaeologist Homer Thiel mentions that this is the remains of a pit house built 2,000 years ago, well before the time of the Hohokam, and forms begin to jell - an arced pattern where posts once held up a roof, linear depressions where walls stood.
"This was not known before. This tells us this same spot was lived in for 2,000 years," said Thiel, project director for Desert Archaeology Inc., the firm hired to shore up the interior of a mid-19th-century triplex at 196 N. Court Ave.
The triplex, the abode of noted seamstress Soledad Jacomé and her six daughters from 1866 to 1911, will eventually be a museum in the Presidio Historic Park, a Rio Nuevo project reconstructing a tower of the Presidio fort at its original site.
It's proved to be a treasure-trove in itself.
Inside the three front rooms, Thiel has found layers of history: a pit house and pottery made by the Hohokam as early as the 750s; the largest-ever excavation of trash and debris from the Presidio era, 1775-1850, revealing residents may have been eating horses, cats and dogs; the head of a porcelain doll, a packet of Dukes Cameo Cigarettes and other evidence of more modern habitation.
Interrupting a stroll down Court Avenue to take a peek inside, Lawrence Steen aptly summed up the feeling of the place.
"If you close your eyes, you can feel things are going on in there," he said.
The pit house in the back yard is a significant discovery.
"It's from the early agricultural period, so that was a surprise," said Marty McCune, historic-preservation officer for the city of Tucson.
Older pit houses have been found west of Congress by "A" Mountain, but this is one of the oldest found east of the Santa Cruz River, McCune said.
"That is a new find; we didn't realize habitation went back that far," she said.
Other pit houses from the same era and from the age of the Hohokam, about A.D. 750 to 900, have also been found in the parking lot behind the triplex, near the Main Library and under the lawn of City Hall.
"Everywhere we looked, we found evidence," Thiel said.
The pit house in the back yard of the triplex will be studied, covered with protective cloth and filled back in with dirt. But one in the parking lot dating to around 900, which was found under a corner of the Presidio wall, may be kept uncovered and turned into an interpretive exhibit where people can see the actual remains, Thiel said.
"The plan is to figure out some way to conserve it so it doesn't erode."
That exhibit, in turn, would be part of a larger plaza connecting the planned reconstruction of the Presidio tower at the corner of Church and Washington streets and the triplex at Court Avenue.
The Tucson Presidio Trust for Historic Preservation, which has as its mission the restoration of the Presidio San Augustín del Tucson, will conduct living-history activities at the complex, said Don Laidlaw, the group's past president and current treasurer.
"We see the triplex as an important authentic historic element that adds dignity and a Southwestern flavor to the complex there," he said. "It provides an important entry to the cultural park."
Laidlaw said the trust envisions the triplex museum as a "gatekeeper," with displays of costumes and implements of the Spanish colonial era and other exhibits that can be quickly assimilated and understood by casual visitors.
"This is not a whole museum experience, but an introduction with the main displays in the Arizona State Museum and Historical Society facilities," he said.
Outside, the plaza will house ramadas that extend from the reconstructed Presidio wall and along a wall on the south boundary, which will be painted with a mural depicting life in the Presidio. There will also be some adobe brick ovens for use in cooking demonstrations.
"We're keenly interested in the portrayal of all the elements of Spanish colonial history," Laidlaw said.
The Presidio Historic Park is one of three geographic sites identified as part of the Tucson Origins Heritage Park, a project that aims to reconstruct and interpret 11,500 years of human history and 30 million years of natural history as it occurred on both sides of the Santa Cruz River.
The other two sites are the San Augustín Mission near "A" Mountain, the center of civilian rule during the Spanish colonial era, and the Mission Garden near the mission San Xavier del Bac, the religious center. The Presidio was the military center.
"Tucson will be the only city in the United States that has those distinctive elements of Spanish colonial policy clearly exhibited," Laidlaw said.
A design team for the Presidio Historic Park should be selected by mid-August, McCune said. The design should take six to eight months to complete and construction about a year. So if all goes as planned, the park should be open in two years.
● Contact reporter Joyesha Chesnick at 807-7789 or jchesnick@azstarnet.com.
posted by Aestrea Raven at Thursday, June 30, 2005
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